eGame+VoiceWriters

by  [|Renee Cohen]and [|Barbara Berkovich] ||
 * =  ||= =eGame VoiceWriters=

Overview
Voice Writing, also known as captioning, is a job skill that can be used to create transcripts of court proceeding, television broadcasts, business or educational presentations. This game will introduce new students to the craft, and encourage more experienced students to practice their phrase repetition skills in a fun and competitive environment. Further details can be found in the design section below, but generally, the game will be played as follows: A player will initiate a session by choosing the level of skill s/he would like to start with. Audio content will begin, and the player will simultaneously repeat the words being heard, speaking into speech recognition software. The spoken words will appear as text. When the audio selection ends, the player will compare his newly created text with the actual text from the recorded audio content that was just heard, and points will be awarded based on performance. As the player's skill increases, the audio content will become more difficult, including foreign accents, technical material and other scenarios that could occur on the job. Each session has the specific goal of repeating verbatim what was just heard.

Instructional Objective
The learning objectives being reinforced by this game are the skills used in the job of a voice writer. Repeating strings of words accurately is not as simple as it sounds. This game will give learners the practice they need to begin voice writing, or to hone their skills already in use.

For students of court reporting or captioning programs, this game will provide real-life recordings of court proceedings, classrooms and teleconferences, and will simulate the actual work environment.

Learners
The game is designed for anyone interested in learning about voice writing. The //Voice Writers// game would be used in an academic setting in the context of preparing students to enter the field of court reporting and/or commercial voice writing, also known as captioning. The students of voice writing typically include:
 * High achieving high school students
 * University students
 * Adults looking to change career paths, for example vocational rehabilitation clients

Context of Use
The game is designed to be used in distance education classes for court reporting or captioning training. On-site captioning students would also benefit from the game.

Scope
Sessions are anticipated to last 15-30 minutes. There will be enough variety in the content to encourage students to play the game repeatedly for skill development practice. The game will provide speech to text challenges in three workplace environments, the academic setting, the courtroom, and broadcast television. The level of difficulty will be measured by how many words are transcribed for each video presented.

Object of the Game
The goal of the game is to score higher than competitors, or to improve on the player's personal best score.

Competing Products
There are no competing products even similar to this game. After extensive searches on several gaming sites with keywords such as captioning, court reporting, voice writing, speech recognition, transcribing skills training, no electronic or board games such as this were found. The captioning games in existence consist of creating captions to describe particular screen shots, as seen in the links below: http://www.edgecurve.com/captiongame/game.php?round=200 http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/sports_talk/caption_comp/4309069.stm

Design Details
This game has a design which is similar to quiz games. Click here [|Voice Writer Design Document and Demo] for the following information:
 * a description of the categorization scheme used for questions - education, broadcast television and courtroom, with realistic graphics as depicted below
 * sample questions within each category showing questions at each level of difficulty - similar material to board game



Motivational Issues
This game engages the learner in a variety of ways. First, the curiosity of the learner is aroused by way of the uniqueness of the game itself. Learners will be motivated to play the game just to learn more about what voice writing is all about. Secondly, the game is very challenging. What seems to be an easy task of repeating strings of words clearly becomes more difficult than originally expected, and then engages the players to a level where they wish to succeed at the activity. The competition element adds to the motivation of learners to play the game. Whether players are competing against each other, or their own prior scores, they will be motivated to continue playing the game to rise above their prior successful level of ability. In addition, the skill of voice writing itself can be done most successfully when in a state of flow, as described by Csikszentmihalyi. That is, the learner is fully immersed in the act of listening and repeating, with a sense of energized focus and full involvement in the activity.

The components of "flow" that are present in this game include clear goals, a high degree of concentration, loss of self-consciousness by merging action and awareness, direct and immediate feedback, as well as a personal sense of control as evidenced by the balance of ability and challenge of the task of voice writing.

Design Process
Voice Writers was initially designed as a board game earlier in the semester, and is being adapted into an e-game using many of the same elements and processes. Most of the background information for the game was acquired through years of experience in the captioning industry. Using the board game for play testing provided some of the feedback that we used when developing the egame. During play testing, we learned that players enjoyed the challenge of repeating unfamiliar phrases, as well as earning "money" for their efforts. This game was designed mainly in response to the shortage of qualified captioners in the workplace. The emerging field is growing quite rapidly and there are not enough service providers. The thought is that by making the training more fun, additional prospective candidates will learn the skill of voice writing. In the design of this game, a subject matter expert was used for most of the substantive information. Professional experience and actual transcripts were used to develop the audio tracks for the game. The various job skills and venues of the career were also developed in the same manner. During the design phase, the notion of karaoke was considered. The skill of voice writers is very similar to singing the lyrics of songs along with the musician(s). Although we did not do any play testing with that idea, it remains a consideration of interest for the designers. Features of the game elements that are included are listed below:
 * movement through space or time – moving through the various venues to acquire skills in different areas, such as broadcast television or courtrooms
 * shortcuts - taking the challenges using the bonus areas
 * obstacles – levels of difficulty vary and make scoring points more challenging
 * choices and decisions – players need to choose which soundbites they will successfully repeat, based on their own skill level
 * variations in risk – the levels of skill on each screen will become progressively more difficult, so using some strategy to play the game is helpful in getting ahead
 * changing environments – different venues and materials
 * random or uncontrolled events – the audio materials will be dictated at unpredictable speeds and is varied by content